Yamazaki

1) Again, like all skills - you improve by practicing and doing. Also, general rule of thumb is 3-5 sentences a paragraph. 5) There's no rush, and jump in when you're feeling ready. Many people try out as a player first before they GM, but do whatever feels most natural to you. Even if it means lurking for a while longer.

A little late to this, but a few things: 1) You may wanna break up walls of text like this into more paragraphs to make it easier to read. Readability in posts go a very long way in this medium of play. 2) More importantly, it will be somewhat system dependent, and GM dependent. With the example you have here, you'd likely be able to get away with sharing the pregen character sheets and helping out with specific rules that are related to those sheets if they're not in the core rules. Obviously you'll want to check the fine print of the books to see what is and isn't allowed to be shared online (although if you can find them online thru official sources, you're usually safe). That said, a lot of systems these days offer a quick start guide or player-facing PDF or SRDs or whatever to help folks cut their teeth on the system and make it accessible to try out. Some games are not going to be easy to introduce to folks on MW without them obtaining the books, though, but there's nothing wrong with seeing if people are game to try and willing to take a small risk in buying a PDF in those cases. 3) Unless you've been joining games and then ditching them, you've not been ghosting. You're lurking. There is a difference. Ghosting is the act of starting something (like joining or starting a game or even a relationship) and then ditching without a word. Lurking is the ancient internet art of just putzing around a site/forum/etc and not saying anything 90% of the time. Lurking is socially acceptable (and in fact a very smart thing to do when joining a new online community to get the vibe and culture), ghosting is not. 4) Social skills are a skill - the more you do it, the better you'll be at it. You'll pick up on the various tips and tricks as you go along. Mistakes can and will happen, but that's just part of learning how to get better at any skill, including socializing.

I own a good handful of modules and Adventure Paths, and as much as I would love to run them, I continue to find that I'm not good at running modules. Just never could figure out how to best make them sing, ya know? So I stick to homebrew stuff nowadays, although modules make for good resources of maps and encounters and the occasional plot idea. I will, however, continue to burn money on RPG systems that I may not ever run...

Lately, I've been on a rules-lite kick. Specifically of the FitD variety, but also Wildsea has caught my attention recently. Unfortunately, I don't quite have the gumption to run anything via PbP lately, save for a few 1x1 trades, and I haven't quite found the time and gumption to get my usual crew of casual manslaughter vagrants together to run anything.

Ozzy is right - Guile is meant for more social and intrigue focused campaigns. It's got a handful of things to dabble with that are combat/exploration focused, but that's a lesser focus compared to Power and Might's sides. I am interested in the concept, although on the fence about the Guile focus - I find it's a great supplementary aspect and it has some fun toys to play around with, but its intrigue focus is less of my jam. Also Outwit makes no bloody sense to me on how to execute it.

Welcome to the Weave, Nick. Poke around - it may take some effort and time to find a long standing group in PbP, but hopefully you'll find folks who you gel with. Anyhow, in case you haven't seen it yet, here's a link to our , which contains several handy links that you will likely find useful. We do things a touch differently than some other sites, where we have game ads posted and prospective players apply. You'll want to swing over by our to check that out! Every GM does it a little differently, so check the campaign info and forum for the exact details. We support a very wide variety of systems here, ranging from good ol D&D (of all editions) to Pathfinder to Shadowrun to Fate to PbtA to OSR to, well, I don't think there's a system we don't support or have players for. So if you spot something outside of your norm that catches your attention - go ahead and apply for it anyways. There is much to be gained by going outside of the box, after all. Also, I recommend getting chatty through out the forums or even dropping by our , especially if you have questions. Just watch out for those welcoming harpoons - they're harmless... mostly 😂 If you have any questions, let us know! Don't be afraid to ask, either - we do our best to help people out. -Yamazaki

Welcome to the Weave, Elik. We have a few guides around here that should help you cut your teeth on the Play-by-Post format, and there's nothing quite like plain ol' experience to help you along the way. If you have any questions, let us know! Anyhow, in case you haven't seen it yet, here's a link to our , which contains several handy links that you will likely find useful. We do things a touch differently than some other sites, where we have game ads posted and prospective players apply. You'll want to swing over by our to check that out! Every GM does it a little differently, so check the campaign info and forum for the exact details. We support a very wide variety of systems here, ranging from good ol D&D (of all editions) to Pathfinder to Shadowrun to Fate to PbtA to OSR to, well, I don't think there's a system we don't support or have players for. So if you spot something outside of your norm that catches your attention - go ahead and apply for it anyways. There is much to be gained by going outside of the box, after all. Also, I recommend getting chatty through out the forums or even dropping by our , especially if you have questions. Just watch out for those welcoming harpoons - they're harmless... mostly 😂 If you have any questions, let us know! Don't be afraid to ask, either - we do our best to help people out. -Yamazaki

Welcome to the Weave, Senkusha! Didn't we talk on the r/pbp discord the other day a bit? Side note: good to see another BESM fan around - I thought I was one of the very very few who actually appreciated that system. I liked 3e best (4e felt like it backtracked too much to 2e's stuff for my liking). Anyhow, in case you haven't seen it yet, here's a link to our , which contains several handy links that you will likely find useful. We do things a touch differently than some other sites, where we have game ads posted and prospective players apply. You'll want to swing over by our to check that out! Every GM does it a little differently, so check the campaign info and forum for the exact details. We support a very wide variety of systems here, ranging from good ol D&D (of all editions) to Pathfinder to Shadowrun to Fate to PbtA to OSR to, well, I don't think there's a system we don't support or have players for. So if you spot something outside of your norm that catches your attention - go ahead and apply for it anyways. There is much to be gained by going outside of the box, after all. Also, I recommend getting chatty through out the forums or even dropping by our , especially if you have questions. Just watch out for those welcoming harpoons - they're harmless... mostly 😂 If you have any questions, let us know! Don't be afraid to ask, either - we do our best to help people out. -Yamazaki

Welcome to the Weave, Trick! And yeah - I think I prefer forums for PbP by a landslide. On that note: what's your poison system of choice? Anyhow, in case you haven't seen it yet, here's a link to our , which contains several handy links that you will likely find useful. We do things a touch differently than some other sites, where we have game ads posted and prospective players apply. You'll want to swing over by our to check that out! Every GM does it a little differently, so check the campaign info and forum for the exact details. We support a very wide variety of systems here, ranging from good ol D&D (of all editions) to Pathfinder to Shadowrun to Fate to PbtA to OSR to, well, I don't think there's a system we don't support or have players for. So if you spot something outside of your norm that catches your attention - go ahead and apply for it anyways. There is much to be gained by going outside of the box, after all. Also, I recommend getting chatty through out the forums or even dropping by our , especially if you have questions. Just watch out for those welcoming harpoons - they're harmless... mostly 😂 If you have any questions, let us know! Don't be afraid to ask, either - we do our best to help people out. -Yamazaki

Welcome to the Weave, Gnaws. Don't worry about being quick around here - application time frames are typically in terms of days and weeks, rather than hours like in some other communities. Which is good, since you can take your time creating characters that suit the campaign. Anyhow, in case you haven't seen it yet, here's a link to our , which contains several handy links that you will likely find useful. We do things a touch differently than some other sites, where we have game ads posted and prospective players apply. You'll want to swing over by our to check that out! Every GM does it a little differently, so check the campaign info and forum for the exact details. We support a very wide variety of systems here, ranging from good ol D&D (of all editions) to Pathfinder to Shadowrun to Fate to PbtA to OSR to, well, I don't think there's a system we don't support or have players for. So if you spot something outside of your norm that catches your attention - go ahead and apply for it anyways. There is much to be gained by going outside of the box, after all. Also, I recommend getting chatty through out the forums or even dropping by our , especially if you have questions. Just watch out for those welcoming harpoons - they're harmless... mostly 😂 If you have any questions, let us know! Don't be afraid to ask, either - we do our best to help people out. -Yamazaki

Cailano is dead right - it's hard to get a game past its initial startup. A lot of games fail before they start or fail shortly after they do. But if the stars align, even for a moment, you can go pretty far. Don't take it personal - it just happens. Like, a lot. To all of us. It's actually why we often discuss what we can do to keep things rolling, although even those things are sometimes not enough.

I'm undeniably a sucker for isekai. It's my guilty pleasure. It's also the genre I trash a lot because most of it is indeed trash unless the writer is actually trying to do something with the genre (Re:Zero and Mushoku Tensei are prime examples of using the isekai genre to do character growth), but I still enjoy those silly ones quite a bit. Particularly fond of Slime and Skeleton Knight as my guilty pleasures. Worth noting that isekai tends to be linked up with what is commonly called the 'LitRPG' genre (I'm guessing it's short for Literary RPG? I've only seen the term thrown around as the short hand), aka Video Game Mechanics. This is doubly so for the power fantasy stories, but sometimes they do a bit more than that. That said, I have been slowly creating Although I've not found the gumption to actually run anything in the setting yet.

I figured as much, and that happens. With how I feel about fudging, I don't do a dice screen, even when running in person. Partially because it blocks my view of table space, but also because I see no need to hide my dice rolls with the exception of the few intended to be hidden rolls. I see more value added to rolling in plain sight than not. To my knowledge, this is a common practice among those who are anti-fudging. I agree with you: if you cannot trust your GM, you shouldn't play with them. Which is why I have my specific viewpoint on fudging - I do consider it lies and cheating and unfaithful to the game and the players, and those are the kinds of folks I do not want to play with. That said, I do not believe it's inherently badwrongfun in the grander scheme of things, just a matter of personal beliefs and principles. I'm not gonna trash anyone who does fudge their rolls, because that's their choice and if their group is cool with it, it's not my place to judge. It's something that we will not agree on, but can agree to disagree about and be cool with each other about our different viewpoints (because it's cool to be chill adults with different opinions, ya know? ) But yeah, this is a bit of a derailing and time to go back to the real topic. I will say this: it's a known issue with many Paizo Adventure Paths to be rougher and tougher than they actually need to be. Many of the early PF2e APs can be brutal to an unsuspecting party. Many believe this is because some of those earlier APs were under development as PF2e was wrapping up its dev cycle, and kinda got messed up on the balance a bit. Thankfully, the fans have compiled a lot of advice and reworks to help these sorts of short comings.

This is known as 'Fudging the Dice' and it's a very decisive topic for many. For many folks, like myself, fudging the dice is the equivalent of a cardinal sin. To these folks, it's effectively cheating (no matter in who's favor it is for) and deception, and should never be done no matter what. For players with this belief, fudging ruins the fun and invalidates the challenge (or makes things impossible, in the case of killer GMs), or even may be a form of railroading. Many GMs of this belief prefer to roll in the open as much as possible, and leave everything to the dice gods. And when the dice gods demand the heads of PCs, they're gonna get them, and that's just how it goes. Others, it's just a thing that some GMs do for the sake of their vision of the story. Be it to avoid a TPK because the dice gods really want to take some skulls, or to prolong a fight or to finish it ahead of time, or whatever. There's honestly no wrong answer to this concept, but it is important to recognize your group's tastes.

Just as a FYI - it was added with the Legends of the Spheres splat (aka Guile Champions splat, which for some reason isn't fully up on the wiki yet).

Thankfully, we do just play-by-post here, so no worries there. So as for how to best cut your teeth into the world of TTRPGs... that's a tricky one, and frankly, there's no solid answer to that question. Some folks will just throw you into D&D and call it a day. I don't like that one, but you could do far worse. Instead, I recommend you poke around the various game ads 'round here. Find one that calls to you. If it sounds interesting, based on premise, apply for it. Check the specific details about how to apply. In many cases, you'll need to buy books - most systems offer their ruleset as PDFs (because it's cheaper), which you can find on sites like DrivethruRPG or Ich.io . The main exception, besides stuff from more than 20 years ago, is D&D - which only offers its rules in either hardback or through D&D Beyond, an app for their entire thing. Personally, between D&D and Pathfinder, I pick Pathfinder 2e specifically. It's a bit rules-dense, but it's very consistently written across the board, and tactically minded combat. I found it easy to teach my relentlessly casual players who never read the rules for anything, mainly because of a web app called Pathbuilder, which helps with character creation. Also there's some solid youtuber support. And the whole ruleset is offered free thru the Archives of Nethys That said, I only recommend PF2e if that sorta thing sounds fun to you. That's the kicker about TTRPGs - there are thousands of games out there. For example, one of my favorites is Lancer, a mech game by the guy who writes/draws Kill 6 Billion Demons (he's also responsible for ICON, which is heroic fantasy). I also slowly getting into Fabula Ultima, which is basically Final Fantasy the TTRPG. And then there's Shadowrun, which is cyberpunk fantasy, which I cannot recommend to a newbie because dear chaos that's a mess but it exists and it's cool. Poke around, find what sounds fun to you. Trust your gut, then do your research. As for how often you might roll, and when to roll, and what to add, and all of that stuff, is going to vary on system and even some GMs. You'll have to do your homework and read up on whatever systems you're focused on. Same with applying - consistently, you'll follow a game ad into its forums and poke around, but the exact details will vary from GM to GM.

As far as I understand - yes. I mean, it's called a card game, so I'd be incredibly disappointed if it didn't involve cards LOL. You should be able to purchase it directly from Paizo's site or maybe thru Amazon. It's a very different beast compared to Pathfinder 1e or 2e, or even the cRPGs like Kingmaker or Wrath of the Righteous.

Yeah, PF2e's balance works very well if you follow the instructions of building encounters. But you gotta follow the instructions. This isn't like 5e where CR is more of a vague guess, either - the math is super tight. And when it says it's going to be severe, it's not joking around. So yeah, if your GM threw something beyond your weigh class, it's gonna be a rough time.

I don't know if it's been asked before, but how do you feel about trading feat progression for Skill Talents, as per this table? I ask specifically about doing this while having both Magic and Combat talent progression thru my normal classes. Personally, I only would like to go Trained, to gain a handful of Skill talents to help flesh out my concept. Alternatively, would it be possible to trade out my combat talent progression of one class for the equivalent skill talent progression? For example, I'm eying Inquisitor (Sphere/Soldier of the gods) as one side of my gestalt, and instead of getting Adept combat talent progression, but get journeyman skill progression?

Blades in the Dark is a game that I've really come to love. In short, it's scoundrels in a dark gothic desielpunk-ish city trying to survive by doing crimes. It's Thief and Dishonored and Peaky Blinders as a TTRPG, with a dash of Ocean's Eleven. See, that last bit is what makes it really nifty compared to more traditional games that have roguish antics in it: it's designed specifically to emulate heist movies. Blades in the Dark is a Powered by the Apocalypse game, although it's such a mechanical divergence (as much as any PbtA game can diverge mechanically when there's no mechanical system to unify the design philosophy) that most consider BitD and its children, Forged in the Dark, a PbtA fork. Suffice to say, they share a lot in the narrative-first approach - everything is about storytelling, rather than simulating a reality. This leads to giving the players more narrative power. In BitD, this is done thru the metacurrency Stress, and it has two functions. The first is to avoid bad things from happening - you can resist the bad outcomes of things by accumulating Stress. For example, if you missed a jump across rooftops, you can use Stress to say that you caught the ledge or broke thru a window a floor down, which might still inflict injuries of some sort, but it's better than plummeting to your doom. The second function is what make BitD shine, though: Flashbacks. See, BitD doesn't want to bog everything down by forcing the players to sit and plan everything out, and rather just jump into action. But to allow the scoundrels to feel like they're actually skilled at what they do, they can take stress to go into a Flashback, showing how they planned or prepped for a multitude of things, be it finding a guard to bribe ahead of time, changing the tracks of a train, stashing gear just past the guards a few days ago, and so on. If you're interested, . It's not ideal for learning the system, and there's a few aspects that are kind of confusing (Position and Effect, most notably, as well as the Downtime phase grinds gears because of its explanation), but it's an awesome game. Additionally, worth mentioning are some of the Forged in the Dark games, such as Scum and Villainy (scifi - think Star Wars if it's just Han Solo, Firefly, and Cowboy Bebob), Runners in the Shadows (legally distinct Shadowrun without playing SR proper), Band of Blades (dark fantasy army on the run from undead horde, trying to slow them down while making it to a fort for one last stand), Slugblaster (radical dimension hopping teens doing tiktoks of their slick kickflips and trying to go viral), Songs for the Dusk (post-apoc exploration? This one I'm not too sure about but heard cool things about it), Fist Full of Darkness (weird fantasy western/Red Dead Redemption), and many others.

Some folks will know when they're ready (or as ready as they can be). Most just get that creative storytelling urge and just jump into the fray. There's no wrong answer here. That said, if you don't feel ready right now, you're not ready yet. This goes double for Play-by-Post, but getting a little bit of experience and/or just lurking for a while can go a long way. Most don't need much experience, just gumption and drive. But it also helps to have a willingness to learn, especially from mistakes. And you will make mistakes - we all did when we started. Hell, most of us still make mistakes (thankfully, most people don't notice them lol). FYI, with PbP, don't sweat about completing games. Those are rare in this medium of play. Just do your best, try to get a grasp of how things work around here, and you'll do fine.

The old site is still really fickle right now. The techs are doing what they can to stablize things, but you may need to patient. As for login issues, feel free to swing by the MW discord and reach out to the devs, who should help you get re-situationed.

I honestly doubt that you're that on top of your posting. Nobody is perfect. Nobody can always be on top of everything all of the time. Furthermore, shaming people for, well, being people who have issues doesn't help the problem either. We all gotta cope with this thing we call life, after all. I'm not saying we should forgive people all the time for whatever, but there is a difference between cutting a bit of slack for those who needed a bit of extra time to get their head back on straight, or to deal with real life, or whatever the nine hells happened, can make a huge difference in their continued presence in this hobby and medium of play. It encourages them to come back, encourages them to keep trying until they hit that groove, encourages them to find that group that finally clicks and the stars align. Shame solves nothing. Punishing those who have to deal with whatever will only drive those otherwise reasonably decent players away from a good game or even a good community. Don't get me wrong, I understand the frustration all too well, and it's a valid feeling. It sucks when a player or even a GM just vanishes off the face of the internet, and the game putters out into non-existence. But it's best for the wellbeing of all, both people and the hobby, to let go of that frustration. Learn from the experiences, no doubt, but not to hold onto grudges or hate. Grieve the loss of the game and move on. Life will go on. EDIT: it is worth noting that this is a more generalized viewpoint. As for on the stance of one's own games - draw your own line in the sand. If someone ghosts and comes back but you don't want 'em back - that's fine, you have obligation to let them back in. But I still urge all of us not to shame folks for dealing with their lives.

There are records of finished APs and the like. They happen, but they're the exception to the general rule that most fail before even getting thru the first book of the AP. Certainly takes a lot more dedication and determination to the campaign, and they're usually a multi-year ordeal. But yeah - smaller adventures are far more feasible for the average crowd. Even those struggle to get off the ground, but the odds are better at completing those compared to the bigger adventures.

Ghosting is just something that happens in this hobby, and there hasn't been a good solution ever proposed. But the nature of the beast is that most folks who ghost, assuming they're not jerks to begin with, don't do it on purpose. They don't want to disappear from the face of the internet. They don't want to vanish without a word. But sometimes, it's just easier that way for them. This is when we tackle the difficult topic of mental health and social anxiety and similar concerns, because that's usually the sort of stuff that crops up when folks ghost. Maybe they were late to post and felt guilty, and thus made it harder to post, which makes them even later to post, which ramps up the guilt making it even harder and thus the Death Spiral of Guilt begins. Maybe ADHD and Executive Dysfunction has slapped as a mass "NOPE" in the mindbrain preventing posting. Or maybe the relative to that, where you thought you posted but didn't actually do it (that one has happened to me far too many times). Maybe it's just right out Depression and/or Anxiety that makes you overthink everything you ever do, and posting becomes a true struggle. Half of those could be mitigated by being really honest with oneself, as Basil pointed out. If you know you got problems of various kinds, you should be careful about the kinds of games you apply for, or try to be upfront about those problems. That's at least the responsible approach, but sadly, that requires a lot of self-reflection, something that people kinda suck at. And not everyone has reasonable access to mental health professionals, either, to assist in dealing with the pile of crap that is the human condition. Therefore, I've gotten to the point where I'm relatively forgiving of ghosting. Life's complicated, after all. And by being understanding and forgiving helps reduce the stress and guilt of ghosting, making returning easier, and hopefully it eventually leads to not ghosting at all. I'm not saying that everyone should be, but I think cutting a bit of slack can go a long way. Obviously, I won't forgive someone for ghosting a game I'm in to post in another game. That's just a jerk move. If you gotta leave a game because you're bored, just say something.